I knew Latour was Christian.
From “Thou Shall Not Freeze-Frame” (pdf):
Religion, at least in the tradition I am going to talk from, namely
the Christian one, is a way of preaching, of predicating, of
enunciating truth in a certain manner… It is literally, technically,
theologically, a form of news, of “good news,” what in Greek was
called evangelios, what has been translated into English as “gospel.”
Thus, I am not going to speak of religion in general, as if there
existed some universal domain, topic, or problem called “religion”
that could allow one to compare divinities, rituals, and beliefs from
Papua New Guinea to Mecca, from Easter Island to Vatican City. A
person of faith has only one religion, as a child has only one mother.
There is no point of view from which one could compare different
religions and still be talking in the religious fashion. As you see,
my purpose is not to talk about religion, but to talk to you
religiously, at least religiously enough so that we can begin to
analyze the conditions of felicity of such a speech act, by
demonstrating in vivo, tonight, in this room what sort of
truth-condition this speech-act requests. Since the topic of this
series implies “experience,” experience is what I want to generate.…
What I am going to argue is that religion — again in the tradition
which is mine — does not speak of things, but from things, entities,
agencies, situations, substances, relations, experiences, whatever is
the word, which are highly sensitive to the ways in which they are
talked about. They are, so to speak, manners of speech — John would
say Word, Logos, or Verbum. Either they transport the spirit from
which they talk and they can be said to be truthful, faithful, proven,
experienced, self-verifiable, or they don’t reproduce, don’t perform,
don’t transport what they talk from, and immediately, without any
inertia, they begin to lie, to fall apart, to stop having any
reference, any ground. Either they elicit the spirit they utter and
they are true; or they don’t and they are worse than false, they are
simply irrelevant, parasitical.
This is some of precisely what I have mentioned on prior occasions.
Here (at the end) you say:
“Either they elicit the spirit they utter and they are true;”
And what is remarkable is that this is very close to the way I first conceived of this same conceptual object.
Upon looking deeper I think I see it even better now as rather the inseparability of intention from the process that is set in motion with the secondary intention of bringing the first intention into reality as “Result”.
then it is to intend effect “X”(to persuade, convey or coerce) by means of process “Y” (speech, Literature or media), and when both “X” and “Y” are Analogous we have truth and when they are heterologous we have falsehood. What is interesting however is what this becomes when applied to action. it means there can be true and false action and that is an interesting notion to me.
I am not sure what the end conclusion must be with all things (in terms of a judgement which seems impending) however I can say at least with art (esp pure abstract) that it? a fact that results are of a higher quality with less effort if X and Y are analogues of each other and i attribute this to the fact that working intuitively in Abstract art requires massive amounts of attention to both process invention and process actuation and there is not really enough left over to pretend to have any motivation which is not the actual intention.
where really this leads however is a to a view of discernible characteristics which identify a thing as being axis in a dimensionality defining a unique sort of address in a conceptual space (rather than traits). I find that interesting since to me the notion that “Things have traits” has always seemed pretty easily confused between parties more than useful in the sense of actual definition. I mean I will see one set of traits and you will see another then we?l argue and it’s inevitable because we ourselves occupy different conceptual spaces so then how can we hope to reach resolution through creating conflict and say to ourselves we think clearly?….why is it that it should be so hard for us to accept the objects of our shared contemplation within some conceptual space which is based upon an objective space we both know the laws of?
even if we are both very confused about the actual behaviours of the objective conditions upon which our conceptual space is based SOME mechanism exists to correct us should either of us have the desire to improve our views to better the outcome of our individual and joint observations.
So then…..Truth within this view is not truth at all but rather it is the angle from which facts concerning conceptual objects existing in a mutually definable, shared objective space, align.